I have kept a mating pair of southern map turtles for 14 years now, and in all my experiences with them I have to say I prefer bare tanks just because it is easy to clean.

However, I agree with the others in this thread that recommended sand, it may be a bit harder to clean, but it looks much nicer aesthetically, and you can hide worms and snails for your turtle to hunt for. They love it, and prefer to hunt on their own as opposed to eat from my hand.

River rocks are the in-between, it is easy to clean (you just siphon the waste out from all the cracks) and your turtles will move the rocks around "exploring" and looking for critters you can hide.

As for plants, don't even try. I have tried DOZENS of different plants and all have been devoured. My only success with plants are plants that outnumber the turtle's appetite, like duckweed or dwarf water lettuce. Everything else gets devoured within the week.

A simple and aesthetically pleasing alternative to bare-bottom is some stone tile from a hardware store. Looks way more natural, and has all the benefits of bare glass. I have it this way for my RES :]

I got three tanks one has play sand and big rocks with one piece of driftwood the only problem I have with that one is filling the water back up after a water change but I put down a plate an it's fine cleaning and everything else is cool I'm tryin to do a moss carpet in there now so we will see how it goes my turtles don't eat the moss or sand but the java fern was done the second day. My other tank I have gravel the only trouble there is the turtle moves it and piles it a little bit which is fine u just move it back flat or leave it if it looks good the way the turtle moves it also got a few bigger rocks with moss on them I haven't had a problem in that tank either as far as the turt eatin rocks and some of them are small enough for him to eat. My last tank has five babies in there an its a 20gal. So the water turned green from their waste but anyway I have big boulders in there with a few small ones other than the tank bein crowded there are no problems. I just figured I would tell u a little about what I got set up so u don't get discouraged the only big problem I got with my tanks is that I wanna change the tankscape every few weeks or so meaning other rocks or sand, plants, add fish, do a top tank baskin area or leave it in the tank u know stuff like that anyway good luck either way u go!

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